The Census Bureau’s main campus in Suitland, Prince George’s County, employs a workforce that is considerably more varied in employment status than it first appears. Alongside career competitive service employees who have converted from probationary appointments, the Census Bureau employs term-appointment employees hired for specific multi-year projects, temporary employees brought on for discrete operational needs, and during decennial and other major surveys, large cohorts of time-limited hires whose tenure is understood from the outset to be finite. The same is true at many Maryland federal agencies that rely on non-permanent appointment authorities to staff project-driven work. What most of these employees don’t fully understand – and what any Maryland federal employee attorney working with them needs to establish at the outset – is that employment status under federal law determines not just whether a job is permanent, but which legal protections apply, which forums have jurisdiction over disputes, and what remedies exist when something goes wrong.
Those distinctions are genuinely consequential, and they are not intuitive.
The Federal Appointment Categories That Matter Most
Federal civilian employment doesn’t come in just two forms – permanent and temporary. The Office of Personnel Management’s appointment framework includes several distinct categories, each with different legal characteristics.
Career and career-conditional appointments are the most protective. Career employees who have completed their probationary period have full MSPB appeal rights for covered adverse actions, the full range of EEO protections, and RIF retention rights based on their competitive service standing. Career-conditional employees who are still within the three-year period before converting to full career status have somewhat reduced retention rights but otherwise have similar procedural protections.
Term appointments are made under competitive procedures for positions that are not permanent in nature – lasting between one and four years, with the possibility of extension up to a total of four years. Term employees may be in the competitive service and may have some MSPB protections, but the protections are more limited than those of career employees. A term employee who is separated because their appointment has expired has not been “removed” in the Title 5 adverse action sense – the appointment simply ended. A term employee who is separated before the end of their appointment term, or whose appointment is not renewed when renewal would otherwise have been expected, is in a different procedural position that requires careful analysis.
Temporary appointments – made for 90 days or less with possible extensions but with a maximum duration of one year under standard temporary appointment authority – provide the fewest protections. Temporary employees generally do not have MSPB appeal rights for terminations. They are not in the competitive service for retention purposes. Their tenure can be ended at any point within the appointment without triggering the adverse action procedural requirements that protect career employees.
What Discrimination and Retaliation Protections Actually Survive Temporary Status
Here is where the most common misunderstanding occurs: the absence of MSPB appeal rights for temporary and term employees does not mean the absence of all legal protection. Title VII, the Rehabilitation Act, the ADEA, and the other major federal anti-discrimination statutes apply to federal employees regardless of appointment type. A temporary employee at the Census Bureau in Suitland who is terminated because of their race, who is harassed because of their sex, or who is denied accommodation for a disability has the same substantive discrimination claim as a career employee in the same protected class experiencing the same conduct.
The procedural pathway for that claim is the federal EEO complaint process – the same 45-day counseling contact deadline, the same formal complaint procedure, the same investigation and hearing process. The appointment type affects MSPB jurisdiction. It does not affect EEO jurisdiction.
What changes for temporary and term employees in the EEO context is the nature of the adverse action they’re challenging. A temporary employee who is terminated before the scheduled end of their appointment, where the termination is alleged to be discriminatory, is pursuing a claim that the agency used its broad authority to end the appointment for an unlawful reason. That is a viable EEO claim. A term employee whose appointment is not renewed, where the non-renewal is alleged to be retaliatory, is pursuing a claim that the agency declined to extend or renew the appointment because of the employee’s protected activity – which is also a viable claim if the facts support it.
The evidence requirements differ from career employee cases because the agency’s authority to end a temporary or term appointment is broader. Proving that discrimination or retaliation was the actual motivation for the termination or non-renewal, rather than the legitimate expiration of the appointment, requires overcoming the agency’s straightforward justification that the appointment simply ended as intended.
The Non-Renewal Question: When Not Extending an Appointment Becomes a Retaliation Claim
Term and temporary employees face a specific evidentiary challenge that career employees don’t encounter in the same way. When a career employee is removed, the agency must prove its charges by a preponderance of the evidence – the burden of justification is on the agency. When a term appointment expires, the default assumption is that expiration is the explanation, and the employee bears the burden of establishing that the non-renewal was actually motivated by discriminatory or retaliatory reasons.
The evidence that supports a non-renewal discrimination or retaliation claim tends to come from a few specific sources. Temporal proximity – a non-renewal that occurs shortly after the employee filed an EEO complaint, made a protected disclosure, requested a disability accommodation, or engaged in other protected activity – is often the most visible indicator. The agency’s treatment of similarly-situated term employees who didn’t engage in protected activity, if their appointments were renewed while the complainant’s was not, provides comparative evidence of disparate treatment. Communications from supervisors that reflect awareness of the protected activity in connection with discussions about the employee’s future at the agency are particularly valuable.
For Census Bureau employees in Suitland whose term appointments are not renewed in the aftermath of an EEO complaint or other protected activity, the 45-day clock for an EEO complaint about the non-renewal starts from the date the employee received notice that their appointment would not be renewed – not from the last day they actually worked. Missing that window because the employee assumed nothing could be done once the appointment ended is one of the most common ways viable retaliation claims are lost.
The Decennial and Survey Workforce: Special Considerations
The Census Bureau’s decennial workforce – the temporary employees hired in the period leading up to and during each ten-year population count – represents one of the largest periodic temporary federal hiring surges in government. Hundreds of thousands of temporary enumerators, crew leaders, and field supervisors are hired on temporary appointments for the decennial count, and smaller-scale survey operations create periodic surges throughout the decade.
For this workforce, the relevant protection landscape is almost entirely EEO-based, because standard adverse action protections simply don’t apply to most temporary decennial employees. Discrimination claims, harassment claims, and retaliation claims for protected activity during the employment period are viable. MSPB appeals for terminations generally are not.
A specific concern for temporary decennial employees is supervisory misconduct that occurs in the field – where the oversight structure is loose, where supervisors interact with employees outside of formal institutional settings, and where harassment and discriminatory treatment can occur with limited visibility to HR or EEO offices. Field supervisors at the Census Bureau during decennial operations have significant day-to-day authority over temporary employees and limited institutional accountability. Employees who experience harassment or discriminatory treatment in that context should be aware that the EEO complaint pathway remains available, even though the career employment framework does not.
Converting From Term or Temporary to Career Status: What Affects That Pathway
Many term-appointment employees at the Census Bureau and other Maryland federal agencies work in positions where conversion to a career-conditional appointment is possible, either through competitive hiring or through specific conversion authorities that apply to certain term appointment types. An employee who is denied conversion – or who is not placed on a path toward conversion that similarly-situated colleagues received – may have a discrimination or retaliation claim connected to the conversion decision rather than to a termination.
Conversion from term to career status involves an exercise of agency discretion, but that discretion cannot be exercised in a discriminatory or retaliatory manner. An employee who completed the same term appointment as colleagues of a different race, sex, or age, all of whom were converted while the complainant was not, has a comparative treatment argument that is worth assessing.
Consulting a Maryland Federal Employee Attorney About Term and Temporary Employment Disputes
The legal rights of term and temporary federal employees at the Census Bureau and other Maryland agencies are real but narrower than those of career employees, and the evidentiary requirements for discrimination and retaliation claims in this context are more demanding because of the agency’s broad appointment-expiration authority. Navigating that narrower framework effectively requires legal counsel who understands both what protections exist and what evidence is needed to establish them.
The Mundaca Law Firm represents federal employees throughout Maryland in EEO complaints, retaliation matters, and adverse employment situations – including term and temporary employees at the Census Bureau in Suitland and other Maryland federal facilities. If your term or temporary federal appointment ended under circumstances that feel like they had more to do with protected activity or protected characteristics than with appointment expiration, contact the firm to schedule a consultation before the 45-day EEO window runs.